


Time and Again

by beetle



Category: Inception (2010), Star Trek
Genre: M/M, Star Trek XI/Inception Crossover/AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 02:34:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lonely, retired Chemist has an unexpected visitor. Written for the ever wonderful vinniebatman’s prompt: "ST:XI/Inception crossover."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time and Again

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I’m not bad . . . I’m just drawn that way.  
> Notes: Vague spoilers for Inception. This is not crack.

The knock on McCoy’s door comes just as he’s about to pour his first swig of liquid sustenance on a hot-ass July day.  
  
Normally, he’d never let something as annoying yet ignorable as the presence of others come between him and a drink, but his skin is prickling and every hair on the back of his neck is standing up. A cool feeling ice-dances down his spine despite the soupy heat of the house.  
  
He almost goes for the gun he keeps hidden under the cushions of his ratty couch . . . but doesn’t. If his time has finally come, it’s come, and he’s not about to try dodging it. That was for another life.  
  
Shuffling to the door, Jim Beam held in one relaxed hand, McCoy runs a hand through his messy, slightly sweaty hair—if it’s the Reaper knocking, might as well look like he’s ready for company—puts his hand on the doorknob and takes a breath.  
  
“What is it?” he barks, yanking the door open. Then he nearly drops the half-full bottle on his foot when he sees who’s standing there, looking like the ghost of summers past.  
  
“ _You_ ,” he grits out, surprised, and yet . . . not. Standing on his porch step—dressed in a cream-colored linen suit and black shirt—is James T. Kirk and he is, as always, wearing his charming, used car salesman grin.  
  
“Len—ya look like shit,” he says companionably, sidling past McCoy with a brief pat to his cheek. “Ooh, rug-burn.”  
  
“What—what’re you doing here?” McCoy demands, turning to watch Jim unabashedly size up his Spartan living room. No doubt he’s already put a price tag on everything in it, including McCoy. “Good God, man, stop casing my place.”  
  
Jim snorts, casting his blue-blue gaze on McCoy. On a day this hot, it’s like suddenly being immersed in a chilly pool. “Babe, there’s nothing  _to_  case. You live in an unfurnished shed . . . sheesh, I can’t believe this is the life you chose over a life with me.”  
  
The only time Jim Kirk doesn’t beat around the bush is when you expect him to. McCoy groans. “Believe it and get out.”  
  
Jim pouts, smoothing his immaculate suit before shoving his hands in his pockets. “Why so rude, dude? I thought you’d be glad to see me.” He drifts deeper into McCoy’s dim living room, toward the sprung, ugly couch where he sits gracefully without showing any signs of discomfort. One long, obviously toned leg crosses over the other.  
  
“You’re staring, Dr. McCoy.” Jim bats his eyes playfully. McCoy shakes his head and schools his face into its usual scowl, which does nothing to quell the twinkle in Jim’s eyes. “See something you like?”  
  
“Not in the slightest.” McCoy crosses his arms. “What’re you doing here? How’d you find me? Uhura still working for you?”  
  
Jim applauds quietly. “Hole in one, buddy. Not that you were hard to find according to her and Spock—“  
  
“ _Spock_? The baby doctor?” McCoy uncaps the Beam, takes a gulp and winces. “I’n’t he dead?”  
  
“No. I mean  _yes_  Dr. Spock’s way dead. But not  _our_  Spock. Spock, the  _Forger_ , and Uhura’s husband—long story,” Jim says, holding up his hands as if to forestall questions. “Suffice it to say the team’s expanded since you left. Got us another Extractor, a Forger,  _and_  an Engineer. The very best—the crème de la crème of gear-heads.”  
  
“Which one?” When Jim smirks, McCoy’s mouth drops open. He puts the bottle on the coffee table before he drops it. “Not—“  
  
“The one and only.” Jim smiles like the cat that got the cream . . . which he technically is. “Montgomery Scott—fresh out of BI, no less. How they let the Engineer that created the Mark II PASIV escape their clutches alive is beyond me.” He shrugs. “Anyway, it’s totally don’t know, don’t care, since we got him and he ain’t goin’ nowhere.”  
  
McCoy sniffs. “Blackmail, I imagine.”  
  
“Ties that bind, actually. He and the other Extractor are joined at the, uh . . . hip.” Jim rolls his eyes, but seems more amused than anything. “And Sulu’s not going anywhere. He and I have this annoying habit of saving each other’s lives. I’ve lost count of who’s ahead, but . . . I think it’s me.”  
  
McCoy grunts truculently, putting his hands on his hips. “That jailbait brat still your Architect?”  
  
Jim grins. “Pavel’s still with us, yes. And he’s not jailbait, anymore. Still looks it, though.”  
  
“Is that so?”  
  
“Mmhmm . . . and I totally hit that the day he turned eighteen.”  
  
“You would.” McCoy sighs, ignoring the surprisingly powerful pang of jealousy and pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off a hangover that, for once, he hasn’t earned.  
  
“Pavel said it was the best birthday gift ever,” Jim confides with what is, no doubt, false modesty. Then his smile turns fond and wistful. “I taught him everything he knows. And lemme tell ya, that kid is an  _eager_  learner.”  
  
Gritting his teeth, McCoy steps right over the jealousy, and the strong urge to murder the Chekov boy. “So, if your bigger, better family is as wonderful as you say, what in Hell are you doing here, Jim?”  
  
“Isn’t it obvious? I  _need_  you, Len,” Jim says, his eyes flashing as he leans forward a little. He even licks his lips, but turns it into a sensual smile. “ _We_  need you. More specifically . . . we need a top notch Chemist, not just some drone who can soup up a passable batch of Somnacin. No, we need the  _best_.”  
  
McCoy lets one disinterested eyebrow quirk up. “Then go hunt down that Yusuf fella—he was the guy you used before me, right? Last I heard he was shacking up with some damned Forger in Mombasa.”  
  
“Still is, unfortunately . . . fucking Eames. I can’t  _stand_  that asshole. All he does is flirt and showboat.” Jim’s lips purse in tacit disapproval, as if he’s never heard the word  _irony_. “Anyway, Yusuf’s good . . . but you’re better. It’s gotta be you or no one.”  
  
“Then it’s gotta be no one, because I’m retired—completely out of the business, or had you realized?”  
  
Jim’s smile fades a bit. “Let’s see . . . the morning after Enterprise Consulting reversed the world’s first Inception, I woke up in bed, alone, my genius Chemist of a lover having absconded during the wee hours. Never to be seen for the next four years, three months, six days, nine hours, and some-odd minutes . . . yeah, I’m pretty sure I realized, Len.”  
  
Ignoring the pang Jim’s words—and Jim in general—cause, McCoy closes his front door, resigned to Jim’s—temporary—presence. However much he’s slipped in the past few years, he’ll be damned if he gives the neighbors a free show. “We  _weren’t_  lovers, Jim. It was one, drunken night. That’s all.”  
  
Now Jim looks wounded . . . but only for a moment before that charming grin is back. It doesn’t reach his eyes, however. “It was a hell of a lot more than nothing, Len, or you wouldn’t have run off screaming into the night.”  
  
“Oh, really? And here I thought that was how all your dates ended, loverboy.”  
  
A muscle at Jim’s jaw twitches and that grin loses some of its luster. Inwardly, McCoy smirks. He’s always been able to get past that unflappable calm, and get Jim’s goat. And vice versa, although for once, since Jim’s the one who came calling, McCoy has the upper hand.  
  
“So, is this how it’s gonna go?” Jim asks softly, searching McCoy’s eyes till he looks away, feeling ashamed for some reason. “I pour my heart out and you snipe at me all afternoon?”  
  
McCoy laughs: a harsh, barking exclamation. “Hah! More like I call the cops at the count of ten if you don’t get out. Or maybe I just put you out myself.” He stands arms akimbo, letting Jim take a good look. McCoy may be out of the Marines, but he still works out like he’s on active duty. If only to offset the effects of time and a drinking habit that’s not quite an addiction.   
  
Jim bites his bottom lip for a moment, the second of only two tells he’s ever displayed; he’s nervous, ten thousand miles below that cool, calm exterior.  
  
If that’s the way he wants to play it, McCoy can oblige. “Six-seven-eight-nine—“  
  
“I don’t think you want me to leave,” Jim says quickly, and McCoy nods at the door, which he’s now sorry he closed in the first place. (But then, he’s always gone against his best interests where Jim Kirk is concerned.)  
  
“Think what you like, Jim, but get out while you do it.”  
  
Jim stands up and strolls over to McCoy, wearing his sincere face. It makes him look dyspeptic and somewhat less attractive—that’s how McCoy knows it’s the real deal. “But I wanna stay.”  
  
McCoy shrugs. “And I wanna be the Sultan of Madagascar. Wish in one hand, shit in the other. . . .” he trails off as Jim enters his personal bubble. Even in the shuttered late afternoon light his eyes are fantastically blue, and his scent—expensive cologne over clean skin—is at once foreign and achingly familiar.  
  
“Leonard . . . I really need you—if not back in my life, then back in my employ. Just for one job.“ Jim reaches into his breast pocket slowly and comes out with a few folded sheets of paper. “At least take a look at the particulars before you shoot me down.”  
  
“No.” Sighing, McCoy takes a step back, but Jim follows him, pressing the papers against McCoy’s chest. “Look, even if I wanted to—even if I weren’t as rusty as an old gate . . . it’s never _just one job_  with you, Jim.”  
  
“It can be if you  _want_  it to be. Please, babe?” Jim slides the papers in the breast pocket of McCoy’s own rumpled plaid shirt, pats them, then takes McCoy’s hands and squeezes them. His own are warm—like everything on this hot July day—but somehow not clammy, like McCoy’s are.  
  
Swallowing, McCoy means to pull his hands free, but for some reason doesn’t. Which makes Jim smile . . . that boyish smile McCoy remembers vividly from their one, insanely spectacular night together. Even just the simplest touches had brought out that smile, like the sun rising at midnight.  
  
Jim moves in close, his eyes searching McCoy’s once more. He bites his lip again, drawing McCoy’s eyes to his mouth for a moment. It’s as perfect as he remembers: made to be kissed. “Did I, uh, mention the part about the fringe benefits?”  
  
Jim’s still leaning in, and it’s a close thing, but at the last second McCoy turns his face away. Jim, however, isn’t fazed. He simply nuzzles McCoy’s cheek, his lips brushing stubble that’s technically long enough to be bristles. His feet nudge McCoy’s, and that’s all the warning he gets before Jim’s body is pressed against his own, furnace-hot and still hard in all the right places.  
  
“Jim—“  
  
“God, you feel . . . fucking  _amazing_ ,” Jim breathes on McCoy’s cheek, his voice shaking slightly. He finally lets go of McCoy’s hands to cup his face and look into his eyes. What McCoy sees there is too intense to be borne for more than a few seconds. “I’m not gonna lie and say there hasn’t been anyone since you, but they damn sure  _weren’t_  you, Len. They weren’t  _you_.”  
  
McCoy shivers, his hands coming to rest, quite unbidden, on Jim’s narrow hips. “Don’t . . . don’t say stuff like that, Jim.”  
  
“Why not? It’s the truth.”  
  
“Not exactly your specialty, is it?” McCoy asks, and Jim lets out a gentle, cool breath.  
  
“I’ve never lied to you, Leonard. Not once.” Jim takes another shaky breath and smiles again. “Tell me this doesn’t feel right. That you haven’t spent almost five years wanting this.”  
  
Which isn’t what McCoy wants or needs to hear right now—not when he should be throwing Jim out on his perfect ass. Not when Jim’s dropping to his knees, his hands sliding down McCoy’s chest. When he’s eye level with McCoy’s crotch, he licks his lips again and runs his tongue up the fly of McCoy’s jeans . . . before popping the button and unzipping it. With his teeth.  
  
“Don’t.” McCoy swallows again, and looks away from Jim’s yearning, but patient blue gaze. “Deep-throating me a few times won’t make me say yes to one of your cockamamie schemes.”  
  
“You think I don’t know that? You think I’ve been using the job as anything other than an excuse to come see you . . . to be with you like this?”  
  
McCoy snorts, glaring hard at the wall behind his ugly-ass couch. “And here I thought you didn’t lie to me.”  
  
“I don’t.” Jim sighs again. “I haven’t been. We  _do_  need you, Len. Admiral Pike’s gonna be a tough nut to crack without breaking him into fifty million pieces. We’re gonna need something better than the usual Somnacin we use. Something like what you cooked up for us on the Browning job. . . .”  
  
Startled, McCoy looks down at Jim, his mind already racing through compounds till it lands on the precious formula he’d worked so hard to create. The one that’d helped them undo the results of the greatest mind-heist ever perpetrated. “Shit.  _Shit_ , how many levels you wanna go down?”  
  
“At least two, possibly three . . . possibly to Limbo, again.” Jim shrugs miserably when McCoy swears blisteringly. “Look, obviously Pike’s mind’s will have been trained and militarized. There’s really no room for us to fuck this up in  _any_  way. We do, and we’ll be  _lucky_  to see the inside of a military prison.”  
  
“Gee, how could I possibly say no to an offer like that?” Chuckling, McCoy shakes his head and cups Jim’s face in his hand, running his thumb across Jim’s lips. Jim grins and opens his mouth to suck on the tip of McCoy’s thumb. He swirls his tongue around it, till McCoy’s swearing again and tenting out his jeans.  
  
It doesn’t take very long.  
  
“Been awhile, has it?” Jim asks, his eyebrows quirked in amusement.  
  
“Just shut up and suck me, if you’re gonna,” McCoy grunts, partly because Jim’s right, and partly because his flashes of irritation always used to make Jim smile.  
  
They still do, apparently. And still, that smile does weird things to McCoy’s gut and heart.  
  
“God, I’ve missed you, Len,” Jim laughs, easing McCoy out of his boxers, then his fly. His hand feels like a piece of Heaven crashed to Earth. “Missed you so fucking much.”  
  
“Jim. . . .” it’s all McCoy can say around the sudden lump in his throat, but it seems to be enough, because that beautiful smile widens impossibly before Jim’s taking him down with a series of soft, hungry moans.  
  
“Oh . . .  _oh_.” McCoy’s head falls back and the hand cupping Jim’s face slides up and back into his hair to grip and clench. His other hand comes up to rest on Jim’s shoulder, clenching there, too, as if McCoy might fly away, otherwise.  
  
Jim swallows around him a few times before pulling off almost completely, to suck on and lick at the tip of McCoy’s cock like it’s his favorite flavor of lollipop. And that’s another cherished memory of that one night that McCoy has: Jim’s got a mouth like a Hoover and no gag reflex worth speaking of.  
  
_Must be all that practice,_  McCoy had thought at that time—before Jim had sucked thought away, too. Now, however, after four-plus years of celibacy, McCoy’s not even remotely bothered by the no doubt thousands of people Jim’s been with. All he wants is more of Jim’s mouth and tongue and—holy  _God, teeth_ —  
  
“Yeah, you like that, baby, don’tcha?” Jim pulls off to say. McCoy opens his eyes and looks down just in time to catch Jim wiping drool and pre- come from his chin. Of course, it wouldn’t do to look less than perfect, even in the midst of a messy blow-job.  
  
“Vanity . . . thy name is  _Tiberius_ ,” McCoy murmurs almost fondly. Jim huffs, his face turning a little red.  
  
“Just for that, you don’t get to come in my mouth.”  
  
“Not where I was plannin’ to come, anyway.”  
  
Jim smiles, slow and smug. “Who says you get to come  _there_ , either, Cowboy?”  
  
“Oh, I dunno.” McCoy smirks. “Turn your pockets out, smart guy.”  
  
Jim actually sits back on his heels. Enough so that McCoy can see he’s not the only one hard enough to pound nails. “Jesus Christ, how do you  _do_  that? Are you Superman, or something?” Shaking his head, Jim laughs a little and reaches into his right trouser pocket.  
  
He comes out with a tube of K-Y Jelly and a flattering  _five_  condoms.  
  
“No. But apparently you think _I_ am.” McCoy snorts again, taking the condoms and waggling them, before tossing them over his shoulder. Jim pouts.  
  
“Fine. We can bareback, but so help me, if you’ve got the clap—“  
  
“Shouldn’t that be  _my_  line?” That bright smile flashes out again and McCoy feels a stab of something extremely guilt-like. Because Jim can act casual all he likes, but there’s nothing casual about that happy, almost innocent look in his eyes. As if he just  _knows_  McCoy’ll say yes, and go with him, and everything’ll be just hunky-dory.   
  
Nothing could be farther from the truth. And even if McCoy went back, everything will  _never_  be okay. When is it ever?  
  
“Jesus, Jim, I . . get up,” he says gruffly, removing his hands—though he’ll be damned if he knows what to do with them now that they’re not holding Jim. As it had four years ago, it feels like they were made to do nothing else. “I’m  _not_  gonna fuck you.”  
  
“You’re  _not_?” Jim and about ninety percent of McCoy’s brain ask with wide-eyed disbelief as McCoy carefully tucks himself away and zips up. The goggling continues unabated, and for the first time ever, Jim Kirk looks dumbstruck. “But you just said—about where you wanted to come—oh,  _fuck you_ , Len! I  _know_  you want me!”  
  
“And?” McCoy buttons his fly. In the tense silence between them, it sounds like the hammer of doom. “Unlike you, what I want and what I’m gonna do are sometimes two different things. Yes, I want you, and no, I ain’t fuckin’ you. I do that and you’ll be expectin’ me to go back to dreamsharin’ with you.”  
  
“Bones. . . .”  
  
“Don’t call me that.”  
  
Jim gets to his feet slowly, looking as solemn as McCoy’s ever seen. “I said it was completely NSA, didn’t I?”  
  
“You did. And I think you even believe that, after a fashion. But I know better.”  
  
“You just think you do,” Jim says ruefully, and leans in slow enough that McCoy could stop him, if he had the courage of his convictions . . . but the last of that courageous conviction ran out when he buttoned his jeans. All that’s left is Leonard H. McCoy: possibly the weakest man on the planet when it comes to one James Tiberius Kirk.  
  
However, even knowing it’s coming, the kiss still takes McCoy by surprise: the softness of Jim’s lips, the mint-citrus-coolness of his breath, the warm, agile wetness of his tongue—the tongue on which McCoy can taste himself. . . .  
  
Moaning, he slides his arms around Jim’s waist and Jim slams him against the front door with a hard thud that doesn’t do McCoy’s back any favors.  
  
And still Jim’s kissing him, and writhing against him like an agitated eel.  
  
“I just nearly got a doorknob up my ass thanks to you, you nympho,” McCoy growls, wending his kisses southward and biting a hickey the size of Canada onto Jim’s throat. Jim makes a high, keening sound and shudders against him.  
  
“Make me come,” he breathes, hot and heavy on McCoy’s temple and cheek, peppering them with kisses. “I don’t care if you throw me out afterwards, just . . . make me come.”  
  
“Jim—“  
  
“ _Please, Bones_.” Jim leans back to look at him. Those formerly cool, calm eyes are now hot and angry. “What—begging’s not enough for you? Going down on my knees isn’t enough for you?”  
  
And that extra shine in Jim’s eyes  _ain’t_  what it looks like to McCoy. Not at all. And if it is, he just doesn’t want to know. So, he kisses Jim again, and maneuvers his hand between their bodies. He grabs Jim’s cock through his trousers—hard enough to shut him up and shut him down.  
  
For a few seconds, anyway.  
  
“Fuck, Bones . . .  _fuck_. . . .” he gasps, his head falling back like McCoy’s had a few minutes ago. McCoy licks a quick, wet stripe up Jim’s throat.  
  
“Still not on the table, sweetheart . . . but I’ll make you come. For old times’ sake.”  
  
Jim laughs again. “Put up or shut up, cupcake.”  
  
“ _Come for me, Jim,_ ” McCoy orders, his voice dropping as low as he can make it go—to a velvet purr that he hasn’t used since the last time he made Jim come.  
  
Since the night it seems they’re both doomed to remember.  
  
Jim, meanwhile, is looking at him with a challenge in his eyes. “What—you think it’s that easy?” he tries to laugh once more, but it comes out as a breathless wheeze.  
  
“Yes, I do, darlin’.” McCoy gives Jim’s balls one last fondle then slides his hand out from between their bodies. As soon as it’s gone, Jim plasters himself to McCoy once more, grinding and shimmying his hips, desperate to get off like a horny virgin. “And you’re gonna come ‘cause I _tell_  you to, not ‘cause you’re gettin’ jacked off.”  
  
Jim shudders again, but his pupils are blown wide. “You know, your accent gets thicker when I’m turned on?”  
  
“Well, how ‘bout that, Suge?” McCoy says gently then drops his voice back to that commanding purr. “ _Come_ , Jim . . .  _now_.”  
  
Groaning and squinching his eyes shut, Jim shakes violently, then goes utterly still for nearly a minute—long enough for wet warmth to soak its way through Jim’s trousers to McCoy’s jeans. Then his body goes almost completely limp in McCoy’s arms and he sags forward, his breath gusting in and out like a bellows. He lays his forehead on McCoy’s shoulder and against his better judgment, McCoy holds him tighter and holds him up.  
  
“You’re alright, buddy . . . you’re alright,” he murmurs, running a calming hand up and down Jim’s back.  
  
“Buddy?  _Buddy_?” Jim laughs to himself. “God, I’ve missed you, Leonard McCoy . . . we all have . . . fuck NSA,  _come home_ , Bones.”  
  
“I’m sorry, but I can’t, Jim.”  _No matter how good it feels to hold you like this._  
  
“You  _can_ , just— _leave_  this fucking place! You did it once, you can do it again! There’s nothing keeping you here!” Jim takes a deep breath and lets it out in a slow hiss. “Joanna’s dead. Martyring yourself won’t bring her back.”  
  
This time, McCoy’s the one who freezes, and Jim instantly looks contrite.  
  
“Jesus, Bones, I didn’t mean—“  
  
“Of course you did. What I wanna know is how’d you know about—wait, of course: Uhura.” McCoy smiles bitterly, shoving Jim away from him, rubber legs be damned. And though Jim staggers, he straightens up almost immediately, ready to move back into McCoy’s personal space. But McCoy holds up his hands. “We’ve had our little reunion, and you have my answer. Now get out, before I throw you out myself.”  
  
“Look, maybe I shouldn’t have said what I said, but that doesn’t make it any less  _true_ , Bones—!” Jim’s frantically searching his eyes again, his own too compassionate and unguarded to be borne for long. “It’s not your fault she’s dead.”  
  
McCoy sighs and scowls down at his feet. At Jim’s. At the spreading wet spot on the fine linen slacks. His own wilting hard-on tries to make a comeback and the only thing McCoy wants more than to bend Jim over some piece of furniture is a damned  _drink_. Unfortunately he’d have to go through Jim—literally and figuratively, the damned teetotaler—to get at the Beam.  
  
“Yeah, it is,” he says quietly. Then he looks up, stony-faced and dry-eyed. He hasn’t cried since the night his precious baby died, and he doesn’t intend to ever again. “I need you to go, Jim. And I need you to not come back.”  
  
“ _Bones_ —“  
  
“In fact, the next time I see you, won’t be any kisses and coming—just bullets and blood . . . understand?”  
  
The suddenly shattered look in Jim’s eyes says he understands. At least enough to take McCoy at his word. He may not like it—in fact, he definitely  _doesn’t_  like it—but he believes what McCoy says, and that’s all that matters.  
  
“Fine.” Jim wipes his mouth and smiles, hard and angry. “Whatever. It’s not like there was anything here for me to find, anyway, but half a hand-job and a pathetic loser killing himself with booze and regret. Clearly the man I fell in love with doesn’t exist anymore.”  
  
McCoy feels his mouth drop in a slight, but no doubt noticeable gape.  
  
Oh, he knew well enough that Jim Kirk had feelings, of a sort, for him. Counted him as a man he could trust—and Jim Kirk doesn’t trust but two people in the whole world, as it is . . . maybe three if one were to count this Sulu-person—as well as a friend.  
  
And yes, Jim had never been shy about  _wanting_  McCoy. Not that he ever did anything as obvious as come on to him, but there was plenty of flirting, some of it mutual, and glances that’d damn near melted McCoy’s belt-buckle.  
  
But  _love_?  
  
James Tiberius Kirk doesn’t do  _love_ , does he?  
  
McCoy shakes his head. Of  _course_  Jim doesn’t. But what he  _does_  do, on occasion, is Forge. And more than passably well. He can Forge better than anyone McCoy’s ever met personally, so when the word  _love_  falls from his lips, it’s to be taken with a grain of salt, if at all.  
  
And yet, McCoy still finds himself moving forward, toward Jim, who matches him step for step, moving just out of reach. The wounded, wary look on his face is what finally stops McCoy in his tracks and brings him back to his senses.  
  
This was what he wanted, right? Time to look the part.  
  
“Hole in one, buddy, he doesn’t exist anymore—now you’re gettin’ it,” he agrees mildly, though it makes him feel guilty and wrong and about a thousand other not-good things. “Sorry you made Uhura do all that work for nothing; don’t let the door hit ya.”  
  
But McCoy feels less than righteous when Jim’s classic kicked-puppy face looks so damned  _real_. He simply stands there, looking McCoy over as if trying to figure out just whom he’s seeing. As if he’s wondering where McCoy went and who the stranger is standing in his place.  
  
And why, oh,  _why_  is said stranger such a  _bastard_?  
  
Finally, Jim sighs, shaking his head and smiling ruefully to himself. “Right. Take care of yourself, Dr. McCoy.” He looks McCoy over once more then steps past him: the barest brush of body heat and—when McCoy inhales—the understated scent of expensive cologne and clean skin that he remembers better than he cares to acknowledge.  
  
A second later the front door clicks gently shut, and McCoy holds the scent of Jim in his lungs for a long moment before closing his eyes and finally letting it out.


End file.
